News and general opinion, often privacy, security or computer related, but could be about anything really, including religion, politics, the environment, business or audio books. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Joys of Dial-Up Internet

Nostalgia doesn't work so well when it's forced on you. I'm writing this on day 15 of no ADSL connection this year, thanks to the technical expertise of Telkom.The reason I have an ADSL line in the first place is so that I can fix problems for my customers without having to drive there. This saves fuel and time. Tonight I have to upload a new version of an Access code file. It's 6MB in size, and compressed to a ZIP file its 2MB. Uploading it and extracting it is painfully slow at 44kbps. So far it has taken 26 minutes to connect, upload the file, decompress it, and update one of the workstations.I called 0800-DSL-DSL again to find out the status of the fault. So far no one has been assigned to the fault, and the "escalation" of the call only means that management has noted that I am unhappy with the service. How nice. I wonder if it would help for me to stand with a placard outside the exchange? It might generate some more bad press, but I'm sure no-one would re-prioritize the fault or fix it faster.I guess I'll just have to hurry up and wait. the call centre reckons it will take another 3 weeks. After all, we are talking about a company that makes billions in profits each year, so they couldn't possibly afford employing additional competent technicians. That would be too logical.Jack the cable guy is obviously on leave until "tomorrow", whenever that is. In the meantime fault number 378ARK310107 is being ignored. Did I mention that Telkom refuses to refund the cost of the dial-up calls even though the ADSL "service" is down? I kid you not.